Day in Photos: Oct. 20, 2010

A visitor walks past a piece of art displayed at Kamel Mennour Gallery at Grand Palais in Paris, France. The exhibit is part of the International Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC) due to be open to the public from October 21 trhough 24.

Getty Images

A general view shows the PS10 solar plant at “Solucar” solar park in Sanlucar la Mayor, near Seville. The solar thermal power plant uses mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays onto towers where they produce steam to drive a turbine, producing electricity.

REUTERS

Members of environmental group Greenpeace pose around a luxury car covered by oil, outside the European carmakers association ACEA office in Brussels, to mark the sixth month to the day since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

REUTERS

Workers cross the road in Whitehall in central London. Britain will cut half a million jobs, slash the welfare state and raise the retirement age as part of an unprecedented cost-cutting drive that will test the strength of both the economy and the ruling coalition.

REUTERS

A dancer of the Saint-Petersburg State Ice Ballet of Russia waits backstage before a performance of the Swan Lake at a theatre in Hefei, Anhui province, China.

REUTERS

A model cries backstage after her hairstylist cut her hair to an overly short, undesired length before a fashion show of Mexico’s designer Rogelio Velasco during the Dominicana Moda Fashion in Santo Domingo.

REUTERS

A woman cycles along fallen leaves in Landshut, Germany.

EPA

A Royal Air Force Eurofighter jet takes off during the India – U.K joint air exercise at Kalaikunda airbase in West Bengal state, India.

AP

A plainclothes police officer points his handgun over to anti-government protestors while a policeman throws a rock during clashes near the presidential palace in Jakarta.

AFP/Getty Images

The sun sets as a labourer works on the grounds of Tehran’s Milad Tower, Iran.

REUTERS

Riot police officers move back from a burning truck during clashes with youths in Lyon, central France. French authorities forced strike-shuttered fuel depots to reopen to ensure gasoline supplies, and the interior minister threatened Wednesday to send in paramilitary police to stop rioting on the fringes of protests against raising the early-retirement age to 62. Months of largely peaceful demonstrations against the pension reform have taken a violent turn in recent days.

AP

Lena Aprea, sister of Camorra boss Vincenzo Aprea, is been arrested for allegedly running a Neapolitan Camorra mafia clan in Naples, Italy. Three sisters who were key players in a mafia clan in the southern city of Naples were arrested on Wednesday along with 13 accomplices. Camorra women have taken an increasingly prominent role in the Neapolitan criminal underworld in the last 20 years, defending their men, smuggling drugs and weapons and killing female rivals.

EPA

The ancient Mayan pyramids of Chichen Itza, in the southern state of Yucatan, are lit in pink light as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month in Mexico.

REUTERS

Nathalie Amwasi, 2, rides a nearly 10-foot (three-meter) pet python in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Nathalie’s father Jamal, a 35-year-old Palestinian civil servant is the proud owner of more than a dozen snakes, including several large pythons, all of which live in a shed a few yards from his home in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.

AFP/Getty Images

This NASA Earth Observatory image shows the Susitna Glacier in Alaska. Alaska s Susitna Glacier revealed some of its grinding journey when the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA s Terra satellite passed overhead. This false-color image looks similar to an areal photograph, except that vegetation is red. Susitna Glacier s surface is marbled, combining dirt-free pale blue and dirt-coated dark brown ice. Infusions of relatively clean ice push into the glacier from tributaries flowing from the north. The glacier surface appears especially complex near the center of the image, where ice from a tributary has pushed ice in the main glacier slightly southward. Susitna Glacier flows over a seismically active area.

AFP/Getty Images

An aerial view of houses and rooftops that were damaged two days after typhoon Megi hit the shoreline of Palanan town, Isabela province. The typhoon, which killed at least 10 people in the Philippines, was regaining strength from the warm waters of the South China Sea on Wednesday and heading for the China coast east of Hong Kong.

REUTERS

A Buddhist monk rows his boat along a flooded street next to a giant Buddha statue at Wat Satue temple in Ayutthaya, 50 miles north of Bangkok.

REUTERS

Lightning flashes over Las Vegas Strip casinos as a thunderstorm passes through the Las Vegas Valley.

REUTERS

Policemen use shields to protect themselves during a clash with student protesters in front of the presidential palace in Jakarta. The protesters were rallying against Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s performance a year after he took office for his second term.